Creators Not Consumers Mark Smith

330 mi 11.6 fl oz

OANADUABRWNEHE

. Original publication details

. Contents

. Introduction

. 1. The ice-skating trip

. 2. What the workers did

. 3. Rediscovering social education

. Chapter 4: Social education and politics

. Afterword - Towards a critical social education?
. Further reading

Creators not consumers. Rediscovering social education

Mark Smith
Original publication details

Published by NAYC Publications

70 St Nicholas Circle, Leicester, LE1 5NY.

First published August 1980.

Reprinted October 1980.

Second Edition 1982.

Graphics and typesetting by Overload of Leicester.
© Mark Smith 1980, 1982

Extracts from this booklet may be reproduced for educational and
training activities. Special permission for such uses is not required.
We do, however, ask that the following statement appears on all
reproductions:

Reproduced from Creators not Consumers by Mark Smith.
Published by NAYC Publications 1982

This permission statement is limited to partial reproduction for
educational or training events. Complete or systematic or large-
scale reproduction - or inclusion of extracts in publications for sale
may be done only with prior written permission.

All rights reserved.
Original ISBN 0 907095 02 X
Reprinted with the permission of Youth Clubs UK.

e Contents

Introduction

1. The ice-skating trip

2. What the workers did

3. Rediscovering social education

Chapter 4: Social education and politics
Afterword - Towards a critical social education?
Further reading

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: The ice-skating trip

Chapter 2: What the workers did

Chapter 3: Rediscovering social education
Chapter 4: Social education and politics
Afterword - Towards a critical social education?
Further reading

Note: The original page numbers from the 1982 edition are
included in brackets within the text and indicate the start of the

page.

Introduction

Two main themes run through Creators not Consumers. First, there is
a concern to encourage young people to get involved in organizing
things for themselves. This flows from a belief in the benefits of
associational life both for the happiness and self-confidence of
individuals, and for the strengthening of community life. Second,
there is an invitation to workers to embrace and explore their
educational role. These two themes help to explain the sub-title -
rediscovering social education.

Clearly things have changed in work with young people since this
booklet was written. The space for open, associational work of this
kind has been severely limited - at least within state-sponsored
settings in the UK; and the values of the market and individual
consumption have become even more dominant. That said, the
booklet remains very relevant to the work of

contemporary informal educators and social pedagogues.

It was written in 1980 and revised in 1981 to promote discussion
about social education. In the time since the term had come into
common usage in the UK in the 1960s there had been a number of
developments in thinking about practice that had not been properly
reflected in writing about youth work and social education. To
show what this thinking meant in practice I looked at how a group
of young people organized a club skating trip and from that
developed a view of social education. It later evolved into a concern
with informal education and pedagogy.

Whilst the views expressed were my own, Bernard Davies, Angie
Forster, Gina Ingram, Cathy Kirkwood, Rod Moore, Alan Rogers and
Tony Taylor gave valuable advice and help. The Politics Association
also allowed me to include part of an earlier article first published
in Teaching Politics.

Mark Smith

January 2023

1. The ice-skating trip

Just after club had finished Neil came into the office and asked if we
could organise an ice-skating trip. He thought we could easily fill a
coach if we charged £1.50 per person. How did he arrive at £1.50 we
asked? That's what the British Legion had charged. How many people
had he spoken to? About half a dozen. In the end it was agreed that he
should take a list around next club night to gauge the response. He got
45 names and a delegation trouped in, would we now organise the coach
and book the rink? You do it, we suggest, and after some discussion they
go away and decide on a date and sort out ‘who is doing what’. Tony
and Sue return, phone a bus company, and book a 42-seater. That's
three less seats than people who said they wanted to go, we say, and
anyway where are we going to sit? People are bound to drop out comes
the answer. They leave a scribbled note for the secretary to type in the
morning. Meanwhile Neil is out canvassing the choice of rink. “Silver
Blades” is the most popular, so Tony and Sue do their bit again. What
are you going to charge? They'd clean forgotten to ask the cost of the
coach. Another phone ca/I and Mike (who was skilful with

figures) produced the answer — £1.65 if we were going to allow a little
leeway for those who didn't turn up on the day and to give a tip to the
driver. Mike took responsibility for the deposits, giving them to us to
bank.

Youth workers are always booking coaches and organising trips,
young people aren't. It takes a lot of confidence, a fair bit of
knowledge and quite complex skills to do what these young women
and men did, yet they were all what could be called ‘low stream
secondary modern' and aged from 15 to 18 years. Take Neil for
instance. When the workers first knew him, he had

considerable difficulties in relating to anyone in authority [page 6]
and often to his peers. His frequent violent out-bursts and apparent
concern only for his own feelings had gained him the reputation of
being a “right bastard” and posed the workers problems. It had
taken two years to establish a comfortable relationship between
Neil and the workers and what was significant about his suggestion
of an ice-skating trip was not so much that he had made it, but that
he had taken responsibility to do something about it. The workers

had therefore been very keen to respond to his suggestion.

In this first chapter I want to look at two frameworks that can help
us understand why organising a skating trip in this way can be seen
as social education. These frameworks are:

1. Youth work as process and product.

2. Knowledge, feelings, and skills as elements of a problem.
Product and process

These workers wanted to build up people's ability to do things for
themselves.

The way they went about doing this can be more clearly seen if we
think of youth work as having processes and products. Processes are
the way we use the different resources (or inputs) at our disposal.
Products are the concrete events or things we create. Both products
and processes have certain results. Thus we can show the ice-
skating trip in the form of the diagram. (See Figure 1.)

People put different emphasis on product and process. In general
workers and administrators are keen on work that can be readily
seen and counted. They are interested in concrete results from their
efforts, such as the number of football teams a club fields,
attendance on club nights or building usage.

Process results are far less tangible. They are to do with
relationships, the strengthening of people's competence and
feelings. Both product and process results can feed back into the
inputs. Thus a financial loss on an activity, (a product result), might
mean there is less money available for other events or

the development of people's skills, (a process result), might mean a
more involved ‘activity' is possible.

If we return to the trip, the product result was an ice-skating trip
that in the end has 29 participants, a financial loss (£16) and left
four members stranded in London when they did not turn up on
time for the returning coach (the decision of the organisers). It is
not an outcome that recommends itself to youth

work administrators keen to justify their work by the usual
standards. Some of the process (or educational) results can be seen
when the members organised another trip - they [page 7] demanded
larger deposits and increased the price.

Nobody was late for the return journey!

Figure 1: Product and process in the skating trip

Inputs
workers

money

ideas

time

peoples needs
young people etc.

Processes Process Results

working as a group enjoyment

getting names organising skills a =.,
booking a coach confidence

ice skating knowledge

etc. etc.

Product Results
Entry in the annual
report

Income/loss

Product
a coach trip

The decision to leave people behind marked an interesting stage in
the group's developing confidence and ability to weigh up
alternatives. The factors they had taken into consideration included
the coach driver's impatience, the responsibility to return younger
members home at a reasonable time, the ability of the late four to
handle their predicament and the possible strains on friendships
(one of the late four was the elder brother of one of the
organisers!). Moments of crisis such as this are often one of the few
opportunities youth workers have to see if people's feelings and

abilities have changed. A difficult decision or action has to be taken
and the results lived with. In the event the ‘organisers' came out
[page 8] pretty well. They certainly increased in standing within the
club and, after some fairly heated exchanges with the four

late comers on the next club night, were able to get them to agree
that it had been right to leave them behind.

For most of the time the workers were spectators to all this. Their
concern, as educators, was with the process results— how much
had the trip contributed to the members’ ability to do things for
themselves? One of the major difficulties with an approach that
emphasizes process or educational goals is the relative lack of
concrete results by which to judge the work. In the case of the trip
we have a ‘crisis' situation that allows some of the gains to show but
it's not the sort of situation workers would like to be in every day of
the week. However the lack of opportunities to judge progress is not
the major barrier to feedback in the work, rather it is our lack or
non-use of practical methods to analyse what we see — the
knowledge, feelings, skills framework offers one such method.

Knowledge, feelings, and skills

This simple framework provides a useful way of looking at the
various parts of a ‘problem’. (Throughout this booklet the word
‘problem! is used to mean a “question that faces people” rather than
indicating that something is ‘difficult'.)

Knowledge: What the person has to know to do the job - what
tasks does the job entail, what role is necessary to be successful?

Feelings: The attitudes and values necessary to do the ‘job’. For
instance, does a particular ‘job' mean the person has to tell the
truth, remain calm, be cheerful, like people etc? How much
confidence does the person require?

Skills: What the person has to be able to do to complete the job.
This includes observational/informational skills, thinking skills,
communication skills and action skills.

If we view the ice-skating trip as a ‘problem' to be solved we can see
that certain requirements will have to be met:

Knowledge: The cost and availability of ice skating. Details of
coach companies. What the demand is. Timing - how long does the
journey take. How long do people want on the ice. [page 9]

Feelings: Confidence to undertake the various jobs; Honesty (when
dealing with money). Motivation to carry out the job. Persistence to
see the job through. Respect for others.

Skills: Being able to: calculate costs; use a telephone write a letter;
collect names; make decisions; communicate ‘personally’.

Figure 2. A framework for knowledge. feelings and skills

Knowledge
provides the
basis for
choosing
what to
do

Feelings Skills
provide the provide the
guidance and practical
motivation methods for
for doing doing

Broken down in this way it is easy to see how young people can
flounder when they are told by workers to go away and organise
something themselves. A more truly educative approach would
involve: [page 10]

1. Assessment: where people are helped to recognise their

strengths and weaknesses in relation to organising the trip.
This might, for instance, take the form of the worker asking
individuals what they feel their strengths and weaknesses are,
or a group of young people working it out for themselves. (In
the example this process happened informally - Mike, who
was a milkman and therefore used to dealing with figures,
handled the financial side of the trip. The educational
problem here is that someone's ‘strength' was being reinforced
rather than a ‘weakness' counteracted.) It should also be
remembered that assessment is not a ‘once and for all' event
but a continuing process happening in all the stages and
modifying people's actions.

2. Setting objectives: where the people involved set specific
targets for themselves. Frequently objectives emerge fairly
easily and obviously during assessment but when they don't,
people may need some help in getting their objectives into a
form that leads them into action. An example of objective
setting is Tony's assessment that he was very unconfident
about using the phone to book the coach - it was something
he hadn't done before — and his volunteering to do that job.

3. Learning/doing: where the necessary knowledge/feelings/
skills are gained. To carry on with the example of Tony - he
teamed up with Sue who had done much of the organisation
of the previous trips and was able to explain to him exactly
what he needed to do and say. He then felt able to make the
call. (We can see things didn't go smoothly—in his first call to
the coach firm he forgot to ask the cost!)

4. Evaluation: where people reflect on what has happened
and check whether their objectives have been met. In more
formal groups this could be an item on the agenda. In the sort
of situation described here it could simply involve the worker
or another member of the group checking with an individual
or the group whether they felt things had gone as

they wished. (This four-stage approach is similar to that
suggested in Social Skills & Personal Problem Solving. A
handbook of methods. See Further reading.)

Written like this the headings give the impression of airtight

compartments when in reality it is a process whose parts greatly
overlap. For instance learning takes place in all four ‘stages' — often
the realisation by an individual (during “assessment”) that s/he has
a particular strength or weakness is a significant piece of learning.
It also appears a far more formal process than it is. All it really does
is to put [page 11] things into a framework that workers (and
young people) can internalize so that they have an almost
automatic way of analysing things. Organising a skating trip is a
fairly major exercise but the everyday tasks around the club, like
running the canteen, give workers the chance to use the framework
to help people develop abilities without making a big

production number of it. A simple example is when a member asks
to go on the door. The two-minute conversation that follows would
benefit from having the knowledge/feelings/skills framework as the
basis for making the decision.

The major outcome of such developmental ways of working is not
necessarily people's ability to organise a trip or take money on the
door but their all round ability to solve problems. ‘Knowledge/
feelings/skills' and the four stages involved in ‘problem solving' are
ways of looking at things that young people can latch onto quickly.
They can be applied to many of the decisions and situations people
have to handle. For this reason it is important that the framework is
made an explicit part of the work.

Lastly it needs to be remembered that workers are also part of the
process — they themselves have strengths and weaknesses that
need to be understood and acted upon.

In conclusion
From what has been said so far we can say:-

1. Social education is about process rather than product (creation
not consumption).

2. A comprehensive approach to education involves the conscious
development of certain knowledge, feelings and skills.

We will go on to look in more detail at how this works in practice
and what an appropriate definition of social education might be.

2. What the workers did

[page 12] The skating trip gives us a flavour of what social
education might mean in practice. In the next few pages I want to
look more closely at five elements of the way the skating workers
appeared to operate. They:

1. tried to break down complex events into usable pieces;
2. used existing opportunities rather than created them;
3. used ‘learning by experience’;
4. were participative; and

5. put their work in its social context.
a. Breaking down events

When Neil suggested the skating trip, the workers asked him to take
a board round to try and get a list of likely participants. It was other
young people who undertook the more complex tasks. If the
workers had asked Neil to do the phoning and calculating it is quite
likely he would have refused. They were taking one step at a time.

When we looked at the knowledge, feelings and skills involved in
the organisation of the trip, the complex nature of doing something
fairly straightforward was revealed. It is easy to forget the worries
and difficulties we ourselves experienced as youngsters when faced
with similar tasks for the first time. Neil was able to handle getting
names.

[page 13] There is a danger when starting small, of under estimating
what young people can do. Subsequently Neil did take on more
complex tasks— such as organising the lorry for the carnival float
— but the process took some time and was deliberately unforced.
With other individuals the pace is likely to be different and workers
should be far more ready to take risks and force issues. Their ability
to do this partly depends on how well they know the

individuals concerned — risks need to be calculated. It also depends
on the workers' own feelings and skills. There is a need to take
chances, to risk failure, not just for the young person's development
but also for the workers' own well-being. Workers cannot afford to
go stale.

The above applies to situations where the individuals concerned
have some control, that is, where it is possible to start small. Many
of the ‘crises' young people experience are not spread over time and
don't start small. Events bunch and appear out of sequence but the
same principle applies — that is to break issues down into what is
usable, to explore the areas where the individual or group does
have some understanding and control. A good example of this

type of crisis is when young people have to appear in court for the
first time. They need to be able to present themselves, understand
the procedures and the consequences, handle their feelings and so
on. A court appearance is usually seen as a very significant event by
the young people concerned. It therefore provides unusually large
possibilities for learning if handled properly. The difficulty as far as
the worker is concerned is dealing with this sort of ‘crisis' is often
very time consuming and involves him/her in some difficult
choices.

One, largely unintended, consequence of this way of working was
that it was a group rather than an individual that organised the trip.
So far the focus has been on the development of individual
competencies. An approach which also emphasises the development
of collective ways of working has significant implications for social
education as we will see later.

b. Opportunism

By opportunism I mean that the workers tried to respond to life as it
was being experienced rather than, say, laying out a programme
which states ‘relationships' will be done on such a date,
‘contraception' on another. Such a clean developmental approach
does not fit well with what actually happens in young people's lives.
As already mentioned, things often happen all at once rather than
being spaced over a period and the “easy crisis” need not

appear first. Many workers have discovered that on the whole it is

unnecessary to manufacture events or stimuli in order to set people
thinking. In fact opportunities for learning exist in such profusion
that workers are faced with a major problem of [page 14] choice. A
key factor here is the workers' ability to recognise and then use the
material. This can be illustrated by the following comments from
one of the “ice skating workers": -

“I was sat in the office one Tuesday morning when John came in asking
to use the phone to fix an appointment with the social security. He didn't
know the number so I gave him the phone book. After a couple of
minutes he threw the book down, said he couldn't be bothered and left.
A week or so later on a club night he wanted to phone up one of the
local pubs to finalise a darts team. This time he looked at the phone
book, said he couldn't see the number and gave it to me to look up. The
number was there all right and I twigged that John couldn't use a phone
book”.

The worker went on to describe how he had waited for a private
moment with John to broach the matter and how he had helped
John to construct a small telephone book of his own useful numbers
— alphabetically arranged. He still had problems with telephone
books (especially the Yellow Pages) but a start had been made.

The fact that the workers were attempting to deal with situations
that were felt to be significant by the young people themselves
meant that there was the possibility of some ‘extraordinary’ learning
(as in the case of court appearances), but this has to be set against
the random and [page 15] patchy way in which it is taking place.
The difficulty with opportunism is that there is a very real danger of
throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is a place in youth
work for manufactured stimuli even if it is as simple as putting a
newspaper out in the coffee bar or a poster on the wall. Exactly
because events often bunch it is not possible to pull out of a
particular piece of experience all the various strands at the time, so
it will be necessary to try to encourage thought at other times.

Being opportunist is not an excuse for not thinking about or
planning the work. For opportunism to be successful workers need
to bring to each situation a way of judging what their response
should be. ‘Knowledge, feelings, and skills' is one framework, their
personal values and knowledge of the people involved are

two others. All this amounts to a considerable “hidden curriculum”.

c. Learning by experience

In this approach there is a considerable emphasis on “learning by
doing”. Most of the problems that face us in our everyday lives can
only be solved by us taking action of some kind. We need to be able
to deal with officials, make decisions about money, search for
information and so on. Yet little has been done in the past in formal
education to help people gain the knowledge, feelings and skills
necessary to perform these tasks.

Learning by doing (experiential learning) is based on three
assumptions, that:

e people learn best when they are personally involved in the
learning experience;

e knowledge has to be discovered by the individual if it is to
have any significant meaning to them or make a difference in
their behaviour; and

* a person's commitment to learning is highest when they are
free to set their own learning objectives and are able to
actively pursue them within a given framework

In recent years there has been a growth in teaching social skills, but
teachers have faced considerable difficulties because they are
dealing with experience at second or third hand. In many respects
youth workers [page 16] have the same difficulty. The workers
involved with the ice-skating trip were able to use a real event with
an outcome (the trip) that definitely mattered not just to

the organisers but also to the other twenty or so youngsters who
wanted to go skating. The fact that people were engaged in
something ‘real’, rather than say a classroom simulation, is a
considerable aid to learning. Here the workers were able to see at
first-hand what was happening but for much of the time we have to
deal with feelings and descriptions of events that we have little
immediate or direct knowledge of. Workers are not there when
Debbie gets hit by her father or when Stephen is rejected by his
mates. Their knowledge is gained vicariously. Social educators
therefore have to be sceptical about what is presented

as “experience”. In a sense their most useful role is to help people
identify and understand significant experiences. Yet this is not
enough because one of the stranger aspects of adolescence is the

way we try to cut ourselves off from certain new experiences.

Figure 3: Stages in experiential learning

Concrete,
personal experiences

® ©

testing this personal theory in new situations

observation, reflection and analysis

the working out of an abstract personal theory ie
making rules, ideas and principles

[Based on Johnson and Johnson page 7 - see further reading]

In adolescence the individual is consciously trying to make sense of
the relationship of the external world to him/herself. In doing so s/
he is creating a sense of self, of individuality. At this time we are
reaching a stage of sexual, intellectual, and physical ‘readiness', yet
we have very little experience of these things to handle this growth.
As Richard Sennett (1973) has said: [page 17]

“This is the paradox of adolescence and its terrible unease. So much
is possible, yet nothing is happening; lifelong decisions must

be made, yet there is little to conceive of it, life in which he

is independent, for him to draw on in making up his mind.” (The
Uses of Disorder, Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 27)

At this moment in their lives young people are experiencing a new
and disorderly world. They need to be clear on their relationship to
that world so that they might create their own identity. To avoid
being painfully overwhelmed there is a tendency to ‘invent' or
exclude experience to fit their own understanding. This process of
assuming the lessons of experience without undergoing the actual

experience itself can lead people into holding cruelly stereotyped
views and teaches them how to insulate themselves in advance from
experiences that seem likely to upset their identity. In other words
there is a real danger of people gaining a fixed identity, of them
becoming locked in a sort of perpetual adolescence. Workers
therefore have to walk on something of a knife edge. On the one
hand it is important that young people are not overwhelmed by
new and painful experiences, yet on the other if people are to grow
and develop, they need to actually undergo new experiences. Youth
work should not therefore see ‘learning by experience' simply as a
means, it is also an end - “learning to experience”. This is a point
we will return to in our later discussion of developmental needs.

d. Being participative

“Participation” has a long and untidy history within youth work. It
is an idea much talked about and much misunderstood. The most
useful way of approaching the concept is to look at the four main
working styles youth workers can adopt.

Telling - which consists if giving straightforward orders often
without explanation.

Selling - where the worker has something in mind that s/he wants
people to do, such as pony trekking, and then tries to persuade
people that it is a good idea and that they should take part.

Participating - is when workers and members jointly make
decisions. Thus both parties have some control over the final
product.

Spectating - in this instance the workers don't intervene in any way
—they have no power over what the outcome might be. The
members simply get on and do things themselves. [page 18]

Figure 4: Youth work styles
Telling ——- Selling ——- Participating ——- Spectating

Without a doubt ‘selling' is the most common approach in youth
work. Just as advertisers and marketing people have become more

subtle in their selling over the years — so have youth workers.
Instead of simply putting a notice up advertising a football team we
might now engage in market research — surveying opinions and
then promoting the most popular product. Selling in this form can
often pass as participation but the significant difference lies in

the fact that ultimately it is the workers who have the power — it is
they who in the end define the product - the club's “programme”.
The only power the members have in this example is to ‘vote with
their feet' — they can take it or leave it.

Obviously, each of these approaches shades into another and it is
often difficult to place a particular piece of work precisely. However
the framework can show a general direction. Within a club,
different pieces of the work can fall within different approaches. For
instance members usually have little say in who the leaders are —
they are told or sold a particular group of people. On the

other hand they might have a considerable role in the making of the
club's programme. It is therefore important to clearly define the
areas under discussion.

Here “participation” is being presented as one of a number of
different means a worker uses in his/her work. A common mistake
made in youth work is to see participation as an end in itself. In
some reports and pieces of writing the word seems to have gained
an almost magical status. The significance of “participation” is in
how it can help social education. For instance we have already
discussed the need for young people to have certain new
experiences so as to develop. One thing a participative style [page
19] does is to value their contributions and thoughts and this is a
new experience for many young people.

Three major and inter-related sets of reasons are given by workers
as to why a participative way of working is appropriate to youth
work:-

1. It matches their personal values and attitudes. In general
participation reflects an optimistic view of the world, whilst a
reliance on strict hierarchical structures tends to show a pessimistic
view of human nature. One of youth work's main values (as we will
see later) is the belief that there is good in everyone.

2. It makes sound management sense. Youth groups, because
they are heavily dependent on the voluntary effort of both adults
and young people, should have a method of management that
recognises the special status and needs involved. When people feel,
and are, involved in the making of decisions they are more likely to
carry the decisions out.

3. It makes good educational sense. For reasons already
discussed, a participative style allows increased motivation and
communication and the learning involved in working in groups.

There would seem to be seven main requirements for a participative
style of youth work.

1. Decisions should be taken by the appropriate people.
This is made possible by having clear decision-making
structures that follow the principle of taking decisions where
they hurt. That is to say the decision is taken by the people it
will affect most. These structures should be adhered to.

2. Decisions should be taken in groups. Participation is a
communal experience; it is not simply making sure that everyone is
consulted. Participation is about encouraging people to act and
think collectively, to co-operate, and to feel part of a group. This is
not to say that every single decision needs to be taken in a group
but that decisions need to be taken with reference to a group. All
this has implications for the size of groups. Whether the club has 30
or 150 members, on the whole they will have roughly the same
number of committed and active members who share in the
organisation and running of the group. Splitting the group and
improving staffing ratios are only limited solutions. A participative
style, if it is to be successful, therefore, involves the use

of reasonably small units.

3. The decision must be real. The issues should be
significant, and the decision acted upon. One of the most
common criticisms made of ‘participation’ in youth work is
that the matters covered are trivial and that outcomes are
conveniently forgotten if they are not to the worker's taste.
[page 20]

4. Decision makers should be accountable for their
actions. Two points need noting here. First, people should
not on the whole be shielded from the consequences of their
decisions. Where unpleasantness or difficulties result from a
decision made by a group of young people, it is

not uncommon for workers to step in to ‘protect the
youngsters’. This rather cuts across the educational nature of
the experience. People have to learn that participation also
involves taking responsibility for your actions. Second, where
participation involves the use of small groups, it is crucial
that some mechanism is adopted that keeps the group

or committee in close touch with what the wider membership
thinks. Furthermore, such groups should be accountable to
the wider membership for their actions.

5. The decision makers must have the knowledge,
feelings, and skills necessary. Thus they must have
adequate information, the ability to work together as a group,
confidence and so on.

6. A youth work style should be adopted that enables
people to have the appropriate opportunities, resources,
and abilities. So far there have been a number of things
suggested for this — a concern for process, starting small and
using learning by doing. Further suggestions are made about
workers' values and attitudes and the need to put the work in
its social and political context.

7. Participation needs time. It takes time for people to
develop skills (and to realise that they have developed
them!). Time is important on two counts. First it is usually
necessary for a group to exist over a period of time for the
necessary feelings and attitudes to grow. Second

workers need to devote substantial time to such projects.

The ice-skating workers were fairly strong on the last six
requirements but weak on the first. The structures in which the
young people were operating were not that clear or appropriate.
The club did have a members' committee which included several of
the people involved in organising the trip to the ice rink in London.
Yet the decision to organise the trip was taken on the spur of

the moment by the workers and members that happened to troop
into the office with Neil that club night. There was no question that
the committee would have approved the trip especially as several of
its leading lights were involved but that sort of instantaneous by-
passing is bound to undermine it. Herein lies a tension which has to
be resolved - between the desire of the workers to be able to
respond quickly and the need for consistency and fairly rational
decision making. Another course in this instance might have been
to encourage Neil to get a list of names and to present a case at the
next members' committee. [page 21]

In this particular example the workers were also not as strong as
they might have been on the second requirement — that decisions
should be made in groups. As we have seen the decision to go ice
skating just happened — it involved a number of people — but
were they a group? The first decision, to gauge the members'
response, was taken by the workers and Neil. The second, to book
dates, the rink, and the coach, was taken by a number of
members including some of the members committee. The next
decision about cost and financial arrangements was taken by three
members of the committee — Mike, Sue, and Tony. Such a mish
mash worked and was acceptable because there was a history of
participation in the club and because the process was progressive
i.e. in the end it was the people who had responsibility for
finance who actually took decisions about money and costs. The
people involved did feel a part of a group— they were all fairly
central members of the club.

However, had there been any problems or disagreements at this
stage then the fragile nature of this sort of ad-hoc approach would
have been shown.

There is a real danger in this sort of situation of the worker getting
drawn into taking on what seem attractive roles for him/herself and
so denying young people access to learning. One of the most
difficult times for workers using this approach is when things
appear to be going wrong. Does the worker stride in and save the
day or does s/he remain in an enabling role even if it means

the thing the members are organising fails? In some cases the
experience of failure may do more harm than good, in others it can

be a valuable experience. The only general rules here is that the
young people concerned must agree to the worker taking on a
different role (like selling or telling) and that any action taken must
help meet peoples' developmental needs.

e. The social context

One of the topics the workers often talked over was the extent to
which their work was about containing ideas and behaviour that
the rest of society found undesirable. These conversations were
often sparked off by remarks about the character of the club's
membership. A good number of the members were in some sort of
trouble with the law or were what the social workers called

“at risk”. The youth office had an ambivalent view of these young
people. On the one hand they frequently justified their share of the
resource cake by claiming that money spent on the youth service
stopped vandalism and anti-social behaviour but on the other they
complained about the bad name such young people gave the club.
The idea that youth work was simply about curbing vandalism and
so called anti-social behaviour disturbed the workers. There was no
doubt that the workers wanted to encourage changes in young
people's attitudes and behaviour. They were concerned about the
unhappiness [page 22] and pain that ‘trouble’ both reflected and
caused but they tried to link the troubles with broader issues.

Making links is important. Many personal troubles simply cannot be
dealt with by the individual or their immediate family or friends
because they are linked with public issues. (C Wright Mills talks
about this relationship in The Sociological Imagination, Penguin,
1970, p 14—16). An illustration of the relationship between
personal troubles and public issues is the housing situation
currently facing young people. A young woman or man who

wants, but cannot find, suitable accommodation has a personal
trouble. On the other hand the lack of adequate housing is a public
issue. When a worker helps to find someone accommodation s/he is
tackling a personal trouble only. Currently there is less adequate
accommodation for single people than people wanting it, thus only
a limited number of personal troubles can be solved.

Consequently workers, if they want to help in alleviating all
personal housing problems they must also work with young people

on the public issue — the expansion of local housing for single
people. By setting the personal in its social and political context
and, for instance, recognising that housing is a political problem,
these workers were taking an important step. They were no longer
suggesting that it was the young persons ‘fault’ that they could not
get accommodation.

The nineteenth century philosophical origins of youth work have,
over the years, given strength to the view that individuals are to
blame for their misfortunes. It was people's own fault, for instance,
that they were poor or ill. What was wrong was people's inability to
save, rather than the economic system which gave them low wages.
Youth workers therefore needed to instil the relevant virtues such as
thrift and self-discipline in their young charges. By being careful
and working hard poverty could be avoided. This lack of
sociological understanding was mirrored in the sixties and early
seventies where youth workers adopted the group work methods of
writers like Carl Rogers. Here again was the concentration on the
individual and his/her immediate group which led to

an overemphasis on psychological factors and an ignoring of the
social context of the work. Such analysis, whilst perhaps helping
people in one direction, may have disabled them in others.

The skating workers were keen to make connections, to understand
private troubles within their economic/political setting. One of the
main links they made in this respect was with class. Most of the
club's members came from two adjacent council estates and their
values, attitudes and way of life could only be described as working
class. One of the most common feelings amongst young working-
class men and [page 23] women is their sense of powerlessness in
the face of the major economic and political processes that govern
their lives. To be told that it is their ‘fault' that they are unemployed
or can't get housing, for instance, is to further compound that sense
of resignation and powerlessness. This is the importance of making
connections — not only does a better understanding lead to the
possibility of more realistic action — but it liberates people from
the burden of unnecessary guilt. It suggests that the most useful role
a worker can adopt is to separate the “problem” from the person.
Because a problem affects a particular individual or group it does
not mean it is of their making. And because a problem is not wholly

of their making it can only be solved when consideration is given to
all the major factors involved. This is the challenge facing youth
workers — to recognise that many personal troubles cannot be
solved merely as troubles, but can only be fully understood in
terms of public issues.

In conclusion

In this chapter I have looked more closely at five elements of the
way the ice skating workers operated. They:

1. tried to break down complex events into usable pieces;
2. used existing opportunities rather than created them;
3. used “learning by experience”;

4. were participative; and

5. put their work in its social context.

This group of workers were only able to work in this way because
they had a shared and common set of aims and objectives and they
knew what each other were doing. In other words, they were a
team. For these workers at this stage, the sense of common purpose
had come about more by luck than judgement. They were friends,
had similar backgrounds and interests, and met socially. They often
talked about the club and its members. However, they were

very unsystematic in the way they did these things and a few
months after the trip, when some pretty basic decisions had to be
made about the future of the club, the need for a more formal and
systematic approach to the staff team became apparent. For this
sort of approach to be successfully applied we must therefore add a
sixth element — the need to create and maintain a team approach
to youth work.

3. Rediscovering social
education

[page 24] So far, we have been looking at a form of youth work that
puts learning first. In this chapter I want to ask what makes this
form of learning special enough to have its own label — social
education?

Our starting point will be a discussion of the major reasons for
wanting to

‘socially educate' people and the forming of the following definition:

Social education is the conscious attempt to help people to gain for
themselves, the knowledge, feelings and skills necessary to meet
their own and others developmental needs.

We will then go on to examine some of the value issues involved in
social education and, in Chapter 4, the political implications of this
view.

Developmental needs

The view of social education advocated here is initially based on
two beliefs:

1. All members of society have the right to a full emotional, social
and intellectual development.

2. Society has an obligation to ensure that people get access
to the resources and opportunities that enable such
development.

One way of looking at what these needs are, has been put forward
by Mia Kellmer Pringle (see Figure 5). She suggests that there are
four significant developmental needs:-

a. The need for love and security

b. The need for new experiences
c. The need for praise and recognition

d. The need for responsibility (Mia Kellmer Pringle, The Needs
of Children, Hutchinson, 1980)

These needs are met in a variety of ways — by the family unit,
school, work, friends etc. In this sense, social education is not just
the property of youth work. The relative importance of each of
these areas varies through time and with age. For instance, certain
needs will be more important in adolescence than in

early childhood. During adolescence (which I take to mean the
period from puberty to about the age of maturity — in other words
from around age 11 to about 18 years) a number of significant
things are happening. Young men and women are having to:

* come to terms with new and sometimes worrying physical
experiences such as the boy's first ‘wet dream' or the girl's first
period.

e explore their sexual identity

* answer questions concerning job choice and employment/
unemployment

e change their relationships with parents, friends, adults
e develop a self-concept/identity.

[I've chosen to use this framework as it presents developmental
needs as being interrelated and interdependent. Other formulations
such as ‘Maslow's Triangle’ suggest that such needs operate in a
hierarchical sequence. The most basic needs are for sheer survival
(like the needs for food, water and shelter). Only when these have
been met do other needs emerge (like the need for a

loving relationship). There is now a great deal of evidence to show
that things do not operate is such a smooth way.]

Looking at this list of ‘new experiences' there is a danger of getting
a rather melodramatic view of adolescence. Most young people are
able to get through this period without great ‘storm and stress’. This

is not to say that they will not experience difficulties or do not need
help, but simply a plea to keep things in perspective. Nor should we
forget the significance of adolescence and other critical periods of
transition. In recent years it has become increasingly clear that the
experiences of adolescence rate in equal importance with those of
the first five years of life in their effect on what happens in later
life. (John Coleman gives a good summary of the evidence here see
Further reading).

[page 26]
Figure 5: Developmental Needs

Mia Kellmer Pringle has suggested that there are four significant
developmental needs which have to be met from birth. These are:

a. The need for love and security

This is probably the most important need as it provides the basis for
all later relationships. On it depends the development of the
personality - the ability to care and respond to affection. A
continuous, reliable, loving relationship first within the family unit,
then with a growing number of others can meet this need. It can
give the individual a sense of worthwhileness and of a coherent
personal identity.

b. The need for new experiences

New experiences are a fundamental requirement for mental growth.
In early life it is largely through play and language that the child
explores the world and learns to cope with it. In adolescence
another form of play is important— this time the experiments with
different kinds of role — girlfriend/ boyfriend/worker/leader.
Language remains a crucial factor in intellectual growth — it helps
in learning to reason, to think and in making relationships.

c. The need for praise and recognition

Growing up requires a tremendous amount of learning emotional,
social and intellectual. Consequently strong incentives are necessary
for the individual to continue through the difficulties and conflicts

s/he will inevitably encounter. The most effective incentives are
praise and recognition sustained over time.

d. The need for responsibility

This need is met by allowing the child to gain personal
independence, firstly through learning to look after him/herself in
matters of everyday care and then through a gradual extension of
responsibility over other areas until s/he has the freedom and
ability to decide on his/her own actions and, indeed, to be able to
accept responsibility for others.

Adapted from Mia Kellmer Pringle, The Needs of Children,
Hutchinson, 1980

[page 27]

If we examine these developmental needs, we can see that the
skating trip workers were working in all four areas. In their
relationship with Neil, (the instigator of the trip), they were
particularly concerned with his self-centredness and apparent
inability to take responsibility for his own actions. Over a

lengthy period they had tried to show he mattered to them and as
the relationship began to be reciprocated, (albeit in occasionally
peculiar ways), their concern shifted. They encouraged him to take
on new roles — such as that of ‘organiser' and they tried to
reinforce his behaviour in these roles with encouragement

and support. In the case of the trip we see them seeking to get his
acceptance of a degree of responsibility for others.

The majority of young people these workers were dealing with
could not be considered as having such profound difficulties in
making and keeping relationships. They at least had a relatively
secure personality base from which they could handle new
experiences. These young people were beginning to

take responsibility for their own lives and were seeking an identity
and view of the world that was of their own making. Decisions, for
instance about sex, were being taken that could no longer be
discussed in the family. They therefore desired a more independent
and equal relationship with adults than that found at school or
home. The workers saw these needs for ‘autonomy’,

for responsibility and new experiences, as being the primary areas
for their attention. However this didn't stop them from trying to
meet other needs as they were recognised.

When youth workers' efforts are put into the total context of young
people's lives it quickly becomes apparent that there is the need for
some humility about how much they can achieve. As we have seen
young people are having to handle experiences and take on new
roles that many find difficult to talk and think about in the family
or at school. They often need the help of sympathetic outsiders (like
youth workers), but the family (in particular) and the school

are still very powerful forces in determining young peoples' life
chances and attitudes. However the ice-skating workers
demonstrate that youth workers can have a unique and special role.
The intervention of youth workers can be significant in many young
peoples' lives and crucial in some.

The use of developmental needs has three further important
implications for social education. Firstly, whilst earlier approaches
to social education have usually centred on the idea of adults
helping young people, a developmental needs approach doesn't
make that assumption. It recognises that adults also have social
educational needs and that these can be met by young people.

In addition it takes into account of the help young people give each
other, for instance the caring [page 28] and security they get
through friendships. This whole area of mutual aid is crying out for
youth workers' attention. The tendency has been to concentrate on
direct intervention with the person who has the ‘problem' rather
than to work through intermediaries. For instance when a young
person has to appear in court for the first time the worker might

sit down with the person concerned and run through what an
appearance involves. How much better would be an approach that
gave another young person who had actually had the same
experience and who uses the same language, the knowledge,
feelings, and skills to be able to answer questions and give

support. Not only do you answer the first person's need, but you
also extend another person's competence in the process.

Secondly, a developmental needs approach, like other ways of
looking at social education, places a special emphasis on groups.

These needs are largely met through interaction with others and the
experience of being a member of a group. Groups are essential parts
of human existence. They provide us with both a sense of belonging
and the experience necessary for the creation of our own separate
identity. It is also necessary to work collectively in order

to influence the political system so that all developmental needs be
met.

Thirdly, the employment of developmental needs neatly side-steps
the definitional problems involved with the concept of ‘maturity’.
The achievement of this state has usually been the central aim of
previous approaches. By adopting developmental needs we are
saying that our central concern is personal growth rather than the
attainment of the magical status of being a

‘mature person’. In other words we are defining maturity as the
search for maturity.

If the meeting of developmental needs is seen as a ‘problem' then
certain knowledge, feelings and skills will be necessary to fulfil
them. Added to the comments made above we can move towards a
definition of social education as follows:-

“Social education is the conscious attempt to help people to gain for
themselves, the knowledge, feelings and skills necessary to meet
their own and others developmental needs.”

To sum up, this definition has substantial advantages over previous
formulations. It is:-

* Unambiguous — it avoids the lack of clarity engendered by the
use of words like maturity. [page 29]

e More dynamic — the concept of developmental needs and the
knowledge, feelings, skills framework provide prescriptions for
action.

e All embracing — social education is not seen as the property of
youth work but of several major institutions — schools, the family,
friends etc.

* Conscious — people often confuse social learning with social
education. Education is a deliberate attempt to change people.

Learning is what is gained from that process and from all social
situations (intended or not).

Values

Education is about conscious change. It is about trying to alter
people in some way. The direction which it takes, the changes in
people that workers see as desirable, depend on the values we bring
to the work. Value questions run through all that youth workers do,
yet they are rarely talked about in any detail. One of the major
reasons for this is the inconsistencies that often emerge between our
personal values and our practice. It is altogether more

comfortable not to question what we are doing. Another reason for
our reluctance, is that we

are often apprehensive about admitting that youth work is an
attempt to change people in a particular way. Workers who are
connected with movements that have strong ideas about what is
right and wrong, such as those involved with church groups, tend to
be most clear about this. We all have ideas about the sort of
behaviour and feelings that are desirable, and these ideas rightly
and inevitably influence the way we work with young people even
if we are not entirely conscious of the fact. The first step any
educator must take is to be clear about these values. Clarity is
important, firstly, because clear aims lead to more effective action
and secondly because the people you are working with have

the right to know what you are trying to do with them.

In what has been written so far it is possible to see nine broad ideas
that might qualify as values. These ideas would seem to have an
intrinsic worth and are about the way workers should operate. To a
certain extent these ‘doing' or ‘instrumental' values are also some of
the very qualities social educators want to encourage in the people
they are working with.

1. Problems should be defined by the person who “owns”
them. The problems should be self-defined— it is not up to
the worker to say what the problem is but for the person/

persons to work it out for themselves. People will be more
motivated to solve a problem they have defined rather than
what the worker has said they should do. This is

sometimes known as peoples ‘right to self-determination’.
[page 30]

Arry and the
ke Skating

Trip

‘Arry Gant’ is drawn by
Wilf Roberts

Py... THE WHOLE WoRLD
I$ THERE FOR TNEM To

i GO ICE SKATING !!«?!lee!/
i H HAVE You GOT NO IDEA OF THE

WA COST OF HIRING COACHES

Me THESE DAYS 7!!

Bs,

From the cover of the first edition of Creators Not Consumers

2. [page 31] Seeing the good in everyone. We need to accept
people as they are and not as what they could become. It is
essential to be optimistic about people's potential so as not to limit

their growth. In other words we must try to like and respect the
people we work with.

3. Honesty. Explicitness is important, that is people need to
understand exactly what is happening. More broadly
openness is also valued. Work should be carried out in a spirit
of ‘straightforwardness', not having something ‘up your
sleeve'. A part of this is the need to be oneself and to be able
to talk about your own feelings etc.

4. Consistency. Workers should deal with young people
evenly. They need to do this in order that they gain people's
trust. Consistency also implies management, that workers are
clear about their aims, methods of working and evaluation,
that is they need to be disciplined in their approach.

5. Flexibility. Whilst being consistent, workers also need to
be flexible, as different people and situations need different
responses. This implies that the worker should not start from
a narrow ideological base but have a choice of theories and
practice at his/her disposal.

6. Common Sense. This is a belief that reason should be
applied to all situations, that whilst feelings are very
important, it is important to try and look on those feelings
“objectively”.

7. Freedom of Choice. Whilst it is the responsibility of the
workers to offer help, people must be free to choose whether
they take up the offer. The offer itself must enhance the
individual or group's freedom to choose.

8. Equality. The desired relationship between the workers
and the young people is two-way, mutual, not leader/led.
Both workers and young people have needs to be satisfied.
The problems/needs which are at the centre of youth work
are ‘owned' by young people and are for them to define. The
worker's role is to help people to better understand and

take action on needs and possible solutions and that role can
only be on an equal footing.

9. Confidentiality. Ownership of problems must be
respected. What the worker hears about problems should be
treated as confidential and passed onto others only if
permission is given.

[page 32] This list of values shows up some of the ethical problems
that workers experience. It shows how difficult it is for a worker to
be morally neutral (even if that is desirable). Even the very act of

intervening in people's lives is based on certain value assumptions:

e people should not passively accept their conditions but actively
intervene to change them.

e people should plan ahead.

Workers would be less than human of their values did not show
through in their work. For instance if the worker is counselling a
pregnant young woman who is very unsure about having an
abortion, it is likely they themselves would favour one decision or
course of action. The way questions are phrased, the information
provided, and the tone of the conversation are bound to

influence the person in some way. To this must be added the fact
that people frequently expect workers to be moral agents.

Lastly there is a question about how absolute these values are. Is it
always right to keep confidences? Are there times when a worker
should lie? Should workers respect a young person's determination
to be dishonest or irrational?

We can see here the makings of a real contradiction — if, as
educators, we are trying to alter people in some way, does this not
place limits on their right to self-determination?

Such tensions are an inevitable part of working with people. To
some extent the dilemmas can be eased by workers:

1. Knowing their own values. When workers are clear about
their own values they are more likely to be aware of their
own attempts to smuggle those values into their work.

2. Being open about their own values. By being open the

worker lets other people know where they stand, and they
can then act accordingly.

3. Ensuring that any action they take actually enhances
peoples' freedom of choice. Workers should enable people to
have experiences that gives them the knowledge, feelings and
skills necessary for them to be able to make choices and so
make real their values. (Value dilemmas such as those
discussed in Allen Pincus and Anne Minahan, Social Work
Practice: Model and Method, Peacock, 1973.)

[page 33] As these conclusions make clear there are no simple
solutions to value problems in social education. Each situation has
to be judged on its own merits. However, what this discussion does
indicate is that an awareness of such ethical considerations must
become a part of the basic beliefs of social education.

In conclusion

This chapter has put forward the idea that social education is the
conscious attempt to help people to gain for themselves the
knowledge, feelings and skills necessary to meet their own and
others developmental needs. It has suggested that:

1. All members of society have the right to a full emotional,
social and intellectual development.

2. Society has an obligation to ensure that people gain access
to the resources and opportunities that enable such
development.

3. The help given to people must be based on truth and
reason and enhance human freedom and dignity.

In the next chapter we will see that such a full development can
only be achieved and maintained by action at both an individual
and a collective level.

Chapter 4: Social education
and politics

[page 34] Whilst many of the young people we work with face
incredible injustices, are ignorant of their rights and are racist and
sexist, our normal reaction is that these are areas that somehow,
someone else should do something about. In this chapter I want to
say why this will just not do. I want to show why youth workers, if
they are to be honest in what they do, must turn away from surface
polishing and grapple with the problems of politics and power.

The politics of developmental needs

Issues like racism or powerlessness are so big that it is difficult to
see what we can do about them. The very word ‘politics' is enough
to strike horror into the hearts of managers and bring boredom to
the faces of young people. Yet we can't escape its consequences. The
problem we have to face is that by ignoring politics in our day-to-
day youth work we may actually be restricting people's ability to
meet their developmental needs.

Perhaps the best way into this problem is to look back at those
developmental needs. The need that shows the problem at its
clearest is the fourth — the need for responsibility. People cannot
take responsibility for their own lives in a vacuum. We live in
society and our actions must, therefore, affect others. Thus when
the young organisers of the trip gained the space and resources to
carry through their idea, these had to be largely won at someone
else's ‘expense’.

In other words, there had been a shift of power.
[page 35]

Power: The capacity of an individual or group to make and carry
out decisions and, more broadly, to determine what goes on
the decision-making agenda. Such decisions may be made against

the interests and/or opposition of others.

Power in our society is very unevenly distributed. The young people
we work with have only a slim chance of ever having any real
control over the events and institutions that shape their lives.
Looking back at the value base of social education we took two
basic beliefs as our starting point:

1. All members of society have a right to a full emotional,
social and intellectual development.

2. Society has an obligation to ensure that people get access
to the resources and opportunities that enable such
development.

Whilst workers may believe society has an obligation to all its
members, in reality that obligation is far from being fully honoured.
A privileged few take a disproportionately large share of the
resources and opportunities. This places social educators in a real
dilemma. As soon as they try to enable a growth in people's power
to make and carry through decisions, they are challenging

the distribution of power and, therefore, acting politically. [As I
understand it, politics is to do with power in society - whether that
society be a tribe, a nation state, or some other type; the relations
between societies; and the social movements, organisations and
institutions which are directly involved in the determination of such
power.] Conversely, when workers ignore or avoid this political
dimension they are, in effect, limiting people's social development
and so maintaining the power structure. Thus in an unjust society,
where power is in the hands of the few, social educators can never
be neutral or ‘non-political’.

The significance of this point cannot be over-emphasised. Within
these values and within social education generally there is a tension
between the interests of individuals and groups The decisions an
individual takes about his/her life must affect others. The way in
which this restriction works is determined by the values society acts
upon. We therefore need rules that ensure people keep their

rights and don't infringe upon others’. Just such a set of rules is
provided by the instrumental or ‘doing' values we discussed in the
last chapter. They can be translated into political values such as

e a belief in human freedom, i.e. the opportunity to make significant
choices in a self-willed and un-coerced way;

[page 36]
e justice or what is a fair way to make social decisions; and

e equality, the impartial treatment of people, where discrimination
is based only on the recognition of just and relevant differences.

Ultimately it is only in a society within which people act upon such
principles that everybody's developmental needs can be adequately
met and safeguarded. Unfortunately, we do not live as yet in such a
society, and this has important implications for social education. To
begin to understand these implications we must return to our
definition.

Social education is the conscious attempt to help people to gain for
themselves, the knowledge, feelings, and skills necessary to meet
their own and others' developmental needs.

If we follow the logic of our definition through then the ‘necessary
knowledge, feelings and skills' mentioned must also include those of
politics. So it is that social education is not just political but has to
be consciously political. It has to be a practice that actively helps
people to gain the necessary knowledge, feelings and skills to think
and act politically (i.e. political education). The question becomes
not whether or not social education is political, but given that it is
political what should workers do?

What should workers do?
Firstly workers need to clarify and be open about their values.

Discussions about values are not very common in youth work. Rarer
still is any consistent attempt to test our actions against our values.
One of the main arguments of this book is that values need to play a
more central role in youth work. First, clearer aims lead to more
effective action. Second, as social education cannot be neutral, we
must be open about what we are doing. The people educators work
with have a right to know what is being done with them. This last

point is a particularly sensitive one where politics is concerned.
There is much talk in political education of ‘bias' and
‘indoctrination’. As values are such a central part of human
experience bias is inevitable and important. Our values are our
‘bias'. They are our humanness. Do we want or even need ‘balance’?
It is frequently people's ‘bias' that touches us most. We do not adopt
values through pure reasoning, (indeed there is a sense in which
our values are beyond reason), but because we feel that they are
right. This feeling often comes about because we have known
someone who passionately believes in a certain value and tries to
live his/her life by it. Anyway who wants to be ‘balanced! about
justice or freedom or equality? These are values which social
educators, quite frankly, should be trying to convince people of. All
that youth workers have to remember is that they [page 37] are
educators and are therefore bound by education's values of
openness and explicitness.

There are many different ways in which workers can clarify their
values and understand their political meaning. It is very much a
case of choosing a method that speaks to a workers condition.
However, one point that does need emphasising is that within social
education, value clarification should be both an individual and a
group exercise. We have already suggested the need to build upon a
teamwork approach. For that approach to have any success it is
essential that there is agreement and compatibility about the ends
you want to achieve and means used to get there. It therefore
follows that workers need to explore together (and with young
people), the values on which they base their practice. (For some
suggestions about how workers can personally explore the

issues raised in this chapter see Further reading.)

A further important step is for workers to examine what their values
may mean in the lives of the people they work with. Choosing
values is an intensely personal affair. By and large it is not the
worker who has to live with the consequences of his/her
intervention in another person's life For this reason much
importance has been placed on the idea that problems should be
defined by the person who ‘owns' them. The values we as workers
hold can be experienced and understood in a completely different
way by others. What we may see as sensible ‘rules' about behaviour

(such as the ‘doing' values already discussed) can be experienced as
oppressive by the people they are applied to. Workers therefore
need to be constantly checking the appropriateness of what they are
encouraging.

Second, workers need to understand how concentrating on
individual needs maintains the power structure.

Workers will have to recognise that the concentration on the needs
of the individual and small group that has characterised social
education up until now may actually work to maintain the uneven
distribution of power and so negate their efforts. This may appear
to be a harsh judgement to many, but an examination of the way
power is maintained within our society shows why this may be so.

When people have power, they, not unnaturally, want to hold on to
it. In simple terms this involves the creation of two groups, one on
top of the other, using a process known as subordination. The top,
powerful group maintains its distinctiveness from the larger, bottom
group by setting certain entry requirements. In our society it could
be argued that the two main requirements are the possession of:

* property; and/or
e academic or professional qualifications.
[page 38]

Today it is more difficult than in the past for members of the top or
dominant group to pass on their privileged status to their sons and
daughters. Their children do, of course, start with a special
advantage. There is likely to be a background of academic or other
success, an environment which encourages the gaining of
qualifications and money for special schooling and help. The result
is that children in middle class families stand a much greater
chance of academic success (e.g. over 70% of students attending
polytechnics and universities are from middle class families). Also
while rising death duties may have made the passing on of the
advantages of wealth more difficult, a similar ‘improvement' in tax
avoidance has meant that little difference has been made.

Members of the bottom or excluded group are faced with two
choices if they want to increase their power. The first individualistic
response is to attempt to get the necessary qualifications/property
that will gain them entry. As we have seen, members of the top
group have a head start here. They can also alter the entry
requirements if it looks like too many people from the bottom
group are getting in.

An alternative choice is the collective achievement of power. Here
members of the excluded group join and work together in order to
take power for the benefit of the group as a whole. Examples of this
sort of action would be the day to day conflicts between trade
unions and employers, the efforts of ethnic and racial groups to
attain civil rights and the attempts of women's groups

and organisations to achieve full equality with men. The excluded
group's main strength is its ability to mobilise significant numbers
of people in such things as strikes, pickets, demonstrations, marches
and so on. As such, collective responses often find themselves with
legal problems (not unexpectedly as the power holders use the legal
system to maintain their own position). The types of action already
mentioned can also be very costly in personal terms and

are therefore difficult to sustain over a long period.

To sum up, the top or dominant group is in a strong position to hold
on to power. It makes the rules (and therefore has ‘the law' on its
side), its sons and daughters have a head start in gaining the
necessary entry requirements and its methods of getting and
keeping power involve fewer direct personal costs. When we look at
what youth workers do, the significance of this analysis

quickly shows itself.

Social educators only work with a small proportion of the youth
population. As long as they continue to emphasise individual needs
to the exclusion of collective needs, all they will be doing is to oil
the wheels of the subordination process. An example of this sort of
process is when workers help young people to get jobs by tackling
things like self presentation and social skills. They are dealing with
a private trouble yet [page 39] the public issue is a

considerable shortfall of jobs. The collective or public need is for an
expansion of job opportunities or their alternative. If the worker is

successful s/he merely alters which individuals get through the gate
into the privileged group. The worker does not affect the overall
balance between the groups. In other words, s/he meets the needs
of one group at the expense of the other.

Here then, is the challenge facing social educators. They have
traditionally worked in individualistic areas, ‘private troubles’. By
doing so, they have contributed toward the smoother functioning of
a system that their values would appear to be in conflict with. If
they are to bring their practice into line with their values, then they
have to work in the area of collective action. They must deal with
‘public issues’.

Third, workers need to understand the relation of young
people to power.

We often talk about young people's ‘powerlessness’ without fully
grasping the nature of their position. As well as being young, young
people also have a particular gender, race, and class and through
these will experience power in different ways.

If we begin at a general level, we can see that individually young
people have not accumulated significant property or qualification.
In addition they are not in a position to take sustained collective
action. The institutions to which they belong (such as schools)
discourage it; they [page 40] have as yet, little of the knowledge,
feelings, or skills necessary for successful actions; and the

whole period is one of change which works against any sustained
activity. Where they join community organisations such as political
parties and unions, their interests and actions are frequently seen as
an irritant, something those organisations could do without.

The one major power young people have is a negative one — their
ability to be a threat to order. It was such a fear of the mob which
fanned the development of youth work in the late nineteenth
century, and it is a similar fear which has more recently loosened
municipal purse strings in a number of metropolitan areas. It is,
however, a difficult power for young people to take any
advantage of.

Beyond this general level there are big differences in the way young
people experience power. We should not isolate the mechanisms we
have been discussing from the classes they create. To a large extent,
young people's experience of power will be affected by the
relationship of their families to the subordination process. Thus
children from families in the dominant group are likely to gain
certain ideas, feelings, and skills — those which reinforce

the ‘rightness' of their position and their ability to hold on to it. Ina
similar way young people who come from families where there has
been a history of involvement in collective action will be affected
by that experience. Their view of the nature of power and how it is
achieved will generally be different from the children of the ‘top'
group, but they also could be prepared to act politically. Young
people from families who have suffered subordination without
taking collective action are unlikely to possess such confidence,
knowledge, or skills. They also have a more restricted access to the
means to take action.

If the young person's class position and familiarity with political
action is important, then their potential class position is also
significant. In advance of their fulfilling the full entry requirements

for membership of the dominant group, young people who look like
getting a good range of academic/professional qualifications or
achieving a substantial holding of property can often be allowed to
develop and exercise power ‘on licence’. A classic example of this
process is the government patronage of student unions.

Beyond class and age two further characteristics need careful
attention — gender and race. They remain deep and powerful
means of discrimination.

Firstly, at an individualistic level there is a great deal of evidence
about the under-representation of women and minority ethnic
groups in higher education, apprenticeships, and training for the
‘professions'. [page 41] They are, therefore, falling down on the
‘qualification' entry to the dominant group. Secondly, in relation to
collective action we can see that women and members of minority
ethnic groups do not occupy such a strategic position in the
labour market. The sectors of the labour force that have industrial
‘muscle’ such as the power workers are predominantly white and
male. Women tend to occupy low paid and part-time jobs spurned
by men which are, almost by definition, weak in industrial power.
Similarly, Black and Asian workers tend to be in the low

paid sector.

Members of minority ethnic groups, then, face a double exclusion.
They are usually members of the subordinate class and, therefore,
experience the dominant class's attempts to keep them from getting
too powerful. However they also experience racism from white
members of both classes. Thus, for instance, ethnic minorities are
harder hit by unemployment, do not achieve formal positions of
power and fail to have their interests adequately represented by
trade unions. A similar argument can be made about

women's experience.

To fully understand the experience of young people we must use
ideas such as class, gender, and race. Rather too often in the past
we have used the category ‘youth’ in a far too general way and so
ignored the profound differences in experience that, for instance,
class generates. Such differences also find expression in the way we,
as youth workers, operate.

Fourth, we need to recognise that these society wide processes
are reproduced in our work.

This process of subordination is reproduced in the way youth
workers and groups work. If we take any of the four concepts
previously discussed — class, age, gender and race — and apply
them to our day-to-day youth work then the reproduction becomes
clear. A useful example is class.

From what research evidence we have it can be seen that there is a
high proportion of middle-class young people involved in youth
club committees. The same can be said of other forms of youth
participation such as school councils, local youth councils, and in
self programming groups such as the Young Farmers. We should not
be surprised at this, as these young people are the ‘sons and
daughters' of the middle-class sponsors of such attempts

at participation. They know how to behave; feel they have a right to
participate and are confident that they have something worth
saying. Also they have access to the right sort of knowledge and
opportunities. Interestingly the one club members committee in the
main piece of research in this area that had a substantial working-
class membership was based in a coal mining area [page 42] where
there was a strong history of collective (trade union) action.

(John Eggleston, Adolescence and Community Edward Arnold,
London, 1976 p.109). If we look at the example we started with, the
‘skating trip' club, a high proportion of its active membership either
had parents that were heavily involved in working class
organisations such as trade unions and social clubs or were middle
class. These examples underline the importance of family or
community experience of power in determining the extent to which
its children will become involved in ‘participation’ exercises. Those
that come from middle class or active working-class families are
more likely to ‘participate'. Young women and men who have not
known or seen power and organisation are likely to be

excluded from such exercises.

Age plays a powerful role in determining the sort of youth provision
young people can expect to experience. It often seems that in the
youth workers' minds there are two age categories that involve two
different forms of youth work. Thus for the under-14s youth work is

largely competition/activity based. Over 14 and we begin to see the
trimmings of social education — the attempts at participation, the
development of discussions on topics like sex and sexuality, and the
use of experiential forms of learning. Such a division cuts right
across the developmental needs we examined in the last chapter. In
many respects that initial period of adolescence (from 11 to 14
years) involves more change than the later period. It is, after all, in
this period that young people have to begin to come to terms with a
new set of emotional and physical experiences. It is here that people
gain a more sophisticated picture of themselves in the world.

Given all this, the way we work with the 11-14 age group seems all
the stranger. To deny people the opportunity to have some control
over the sort of youth work they receive is a peculiar way of
meeting their developmental need for responsibility.

We can see similar patterns in the way we discriminate on ground
of gender or race. In the case of gender, for example, in recent years
the evidence concerning the way we work with young men and
women builds a formidable case for workers to make a major
appraisal of their work. Many of us still encourage girls and young
women to view their lives in terms of marriage and motherhood.
On the other hand our work with boys remains almost totally
orientated toward promoting ideas and activities which reinforce
sexist attitudes and does little to encourage young men to examine
and understand their masculinity.

Similarly, whilst most youth workers would claim that they do not
discriminate on the grounds of race, a great deal of youth work can
still be said to be racist by default. This is because workers fail to do
anything about developing anti racist attitudes. Thus when young
people come into youth clubs wearing National Front badges and
similar insignia— [page 43] their presence goes unchallenged.
Racist graffiti and symbols get left up on the walls. Jokes

about ethnic minorities get laughed at. Here we see workers
through their inaction and sometimes through a misplaced desire to
be ‘one of the boys' (sic), supporting and colluding with racism.

OR LEATHERS
--—~— —— wer

Fifth, workers need to understand the ‘politics of the youth
group’.

In the last section we saw how the subordination process is
reproduced in the club or group. We now need to examine how
workers themselves ‘exclude’ young people's wishes.

A useful starting point is our attitude to management committees.
The youth workers tells his/her members that they couldn't possibly
be full members of the management committee (and so be able to
discuss the worker's performance and conditions of employment),
because they wouldn't be able to see both sides of the question/
wouldn't be able to keep confidences/would be bored by the
meetings/and so on. In other words s/he is excluding them

and maintaining them in a subordinate position. What response can
the members make? They have little access to information and to
the sources of power. At a collective level, (if they have the
confidence and skills to go that far), deputations appear with
demands, teams refuse to play. At a negative level equipment gets
smashed, relationships become unpleasant. The saddest outcome is
when members actually believe the things the worker says

about their abilities and attitudes — they accept the ‘rightness' of
their powerless position. Here the worker is not simply failing to me

et developmental needs but is actively conspiring to block them.
[page 44]

If we go back to our definition of power, we can see that in our
examination of the way things happen in youth groups, we should
be looking at what gets onto the decision-making agenda. An issue
has to pass through a number of gateways before a youth worker
will answer it directly. Let us consider what might have happened if
Neil had been in a different club with a group of workers who saw
themselves as the ‘providers' and ‘deciders'.

The first question is ‘Would Neil think about making the request for an
ice-skating trip?'

In many clubs and groups the workers create an environment
around certain issues so that those issues don't even cross people's
minds. If there has not been a history of a particular type of activity
taking place within the club or group and the workers are not in the
business of trying to expand people's horizons, then it is quite likely
that most of the members would not see the group or club as a
possible forum for such activities. Examples of this may be using the
club or group to talk about sexuality, as a live rock venue or as

a means of organising a holiday abroad. In some groups it may not
even cross people's minds that they or the workers could organise
an ice skating trip. This process is known as the Mobilization of
Bias and is a common obstacle to things not getting on the decision
making agenda.

The second question is ‘Would Nell make the request if he thought a trip
was a good idea?'

Let us assume that the idea of a club skating trip had crossed Neil's
mind. The next hurdle is the actual asking of the question.
Frequently questions are not asked or demands made because
members believe it would be no good if they did. They ‘know’ in
advance that the workers would refuse because they had ‘too much
work' or some other excuse. Another response might be that

they expect the workers to make no response! The request will
simply be left unanswered. A third possibility is that members fear
for what could happen if they did speak out — they expect a

retaliatory response. Members may want to complain because a
certain person is excluded from the club but don't speak out because
they might be branded as a trouble maker and therefore

not ‘suitable’ for other club activities. This way of stopping an issue
reaching the ‘agenda’ is known as Anticipating Reactions.

Question three is ‘What happens when Neil does make a request?'

Here the workers may simply fail to directly respond — they say
neither yes nor no. Examples of this sort of behaviour are

e not ‘hearing’ the request
* proposing a delaying course of action e.g. suggesting that a
small [page 45] group should look into the matter (knowing
that the whole thing may fizzle out)

e saying the idea sounds interesting and proposing that the
person should join the members committee/junior leaders'

group so that s/he is brought into the power structure and

can be more easily controlled.

This strategy is known as negative decision making — where
people are able to make a noisy protest, but nobody listens.

Lastly, Neil's request may actually get on the ‘agenda' and a decision
is made.

Figure 6: Non-decision making

Three ways of saying no without saying no
Neil could ask for a

skating trip

NO YES

Based on ‘The non-decision making filter' in Peter Saunders,

Urban Politics. A sociological interpretation, London, Penguin 1980,
page 29.

[page 46]

There is, of course, no guarantee that it will go in his favour. The
workers may

say no.

This non-decision making process is shown diagrammatically in
Figure 6.

Here, then, we have the process by which issues are filtered out
before an actual decision has to be made. We also need to consider
the basis on which the worker is able to use his/her power. In other
words why does the worker have power?

Much that has been written about the sources of power in social or
organisational settings can be brought under six broad headings

e Physical power
e Resource power
e Position power
e Expert power

e Personal power
e Negative power

(The main characteristics of these sources of power are summarised
in Figure 7).

What such analysis can do is to help us understand the position of
workers and what they can do to encourage young people to
achieve some control for themselves. Thus, for example, if we apply
these headings to the relationship between youth workers and
young people, it can be seen that the sources of power most
frequently in young people's hands are negative and physical.

In saying this we must bear in mind the following points: Firstly, as
we have seen, there is power on both ‘sides’. Thus what is of
interest is the balance of power.

Secondly, it is important to be clear where that power can be used.
Many of the arguments in organisations are about boundaries. What
domain can a particular group or individual rule over? Thus whilst
the worker may have control over what goes on in certain parts of a
club - there may be other parts (such as the toilets!) where his/her
control is more marginal and is in dispute.

Lastly, the amount of power an individual or group has will change
— it is not constant. Changing circumstances, new issues, will put
strains on power relationships, bring new forces into play. The
power of one group is likely to be discovered a bluff when it fails to
deliver the goods.

Figure 7 Sources of individual power

There are six possible sources of individual power which give the
holder the ability to influence others

Physical Power. This category is self-explanatory — it is based on
the threat or use of physical coercion. It does not have to be used to
be effective — if people believe in its existence and see it as
superior to their own power then that will be enough. As a power
source it can be particularly significant when adults deal with
children, or men with women.

Resource Power. Here the person is in control of resources that
others desire. It is also known as ‘reward power'. Thus where the
youth worker has control over a building and the provision for
certain activities then s/he can have considerable power through
the threat of withdrawal. Rewards need not be material. They can
be things like the granting of status.

Position Power. This power comes through a particular role or
position in an organisation. Position gives the holder authority to
do certain things. It is sometimes called ‘legal’ or ‘legitimate power'
and in the end has to be underwritten by either physical or resource
power. Position power gives the holder potential control over some

crucial ‘unseen’ assets.

e Information. Information is usually directed towards a
particular position such as ‘youth worker' or ‘secretary’.

e Right of access. Positions give entry to a variety of
networks. Committee membership is often ex officio. People
in other organisations will often only ‘listen’ to those holding
a certain level of position.

e The right to organise. Position confers on the holder the right
to different behaviours - s/he controls the way work is
organised, the layout of the physical and social environment,
the way decisions are made, and so on.

Expert Power. Expert power is vested in someone because of his/
her acknowledged expertise. It is only influential for as long as it is
recognised that the holder has expertise. In a 'meritocratic' society it
is a power that many will accept. Only if expertise is questioned do
the holders have to resort to other sources of power to get their
recommendations accepted.

Personal Power. Also known as 'charisma', here power resides in
the person and in his/her personality. It can be enhanced by a
person's expertise or position. Personal power is tied to success and
selfconfidence and can quickly disappear in defeat. Many people
make the mistake of viewing their power as being personal rather
than positional.

Negative Power. All the previous forms of power are ‘legitimate’ in
particular situations. If power is used contrary to the agreed rules
then it could be said to be negative power. Negative power is,
therefore, the ability to stop things happening, to delay them, to
distort them. In a sense this power is an ‘illegitimate’ use of some of
the other forms e.g. of position.

(Based on Charles B Handy, Understanding Organisations, London:
Penguin 1981 (Chapter 5).

Understanding the nature of power, how it is used and what is its
hidden agenda is of central importance. If youth workers are to

seriously make [page 48] in their work a space for young people to
gain some understanding, confidence and skills in affecting the
political forces that structure their lives, then the problem of power
has to be tackled. This whole discussion points to the need to face
up to the way we keep things off the decision making agenda. How
do we, as workers, contribute to young people's powerlessness?

Sixth, we must look for the possibilities for action.

The problem with the sort of questions that have been raised here is
that they run very deep. Confronting our own racism or sexism can
be personally very threatening. For instance, as a male youth worker
when I begin to examine the way I work with young women and
girls it doesn't stop with questions about the relative range of
activities available to them, but has to explore the way I relate to
them, what sort of things do we talk about, what sort of attitudes
am I communicating? I am then faced with questions about my
relationship with women workers in the group. Are they doing
‘women's work' — looking after the domestic side, the relationships,
leaving the men to ‘organise’? This questioning then leads to my
own family relationships. Do I do my share of the housework,
cooking or childcare? Is the responsibility for these equally

shared? Whose interests are paramount when we make decisions?
How do I use the peculiar and ‘unsocial' nature of youth work to
avoid family responsibilities and so on? It doesn't even stop there. I
then have to start [page 49] exploring the way I work with the
‘lads’. Am I colluding with their sexism so that I can gain entry into
their world? Are they going to think I'm ‘wet’, or eccentric,

or completely out of touch with reality if I start questioning their
attitudes to women or their macho posturing? This is where it hurts.
So much of social education is concerned with process — with who
and what we are — that we have to get personal about politics.

Alongside an exploration of our personal politics we must also
examine what this political dimension means for social education's
broader ‘curriculum’,

We must return to the issues raised in the last section. As has

already been suggested if workers are to help people to meet their
own and others developmental needs then action must be taken to
share the sources of workers power. If we are to avoid reproducing

the subordination process, power has to be put into the hands of the
group as a whole. This has implications for the kind of structures
that will be needed — so that information is open, skills can

be shared — and for the ethos/feelings that will have to be
generated. Individuals need to be committed to the group's ideas
and the idea of the group (i.e. respect for the groups authority). The
headings suggested in Figure 7 provide a useful framework for
starting this questioning process.

At the knowledge level the political curriculum would have to
include many of the issues raised in this chapter. The meaning of
power, how it relates to concepts such as class, race, gender and
age, what it means in day to day life. Beyond that it is necessary to
know how the political process can be acted upon. In many respects
the development of a political understanding can begin in very
simple ways. It might mean that workers have to put a bit more
effort into creating opportunities for discussion by doing things like
leaving newspapers around or putting up posters or by ‘challenging’
people wearing badges. It might mean having a few more ‘formal’
discussion groups. As has already been suggested, the difficulty
with social education is often that there are so many possible cues
for conversation — such as the lads excluding the girls from using
the pool table, why people like a particular record, experiences on a
particular YOP scheme and so on. Our first problem, as workers, is
often that we don 't make the time to listen and talk or don't
recognise the opportunity.

A second problem faced by social educators is that the most
appropriate form of learning — learning by doing — involves action
— and in this case political action. If we look at some of the
knowledge areas that a political education curriculum would cover
then we can see that learning about the way local government
works is best done through directly trying to influence what it

is doing — what is being learnt is seen as more relevant and
immediate. Similarly by starting with the way everyday events in a
[page 50] person's life is affected by factors such as class, race,
gender and age then the significance of these concepts can be
grasped. The problem of course, is that education has

generally been seen as passive. People sit behind desks in rows and
learn. As soon as they leave the classroom and think and act on that

learning then this is somehow not education. The problems multiply
when we consider what sort of things might go to make up the skills
part of a political education curriculum.

The ice-skating trip shows a considerable cross-over between the
concerns of a more traditional social education and the aims of a
developmental needs or critical approach. A clear implication of the
analysis in this chapter is that action on the political system
involves action in groups. As individuals, we have (or feel we have),
little chance or power to get things changed. The achievement

of power for all members of society involves collective action. In
this sense social education's traditional emphasis on groups,
collective and participative ways of working, and the development
of the necessary knowledge, feelings and skills for groups to work
echoes the contents of a political curriculum. However, what is
different is that a developmental needs approach indicates a far
more active involvement by workers and young people in the
creation of space to be able to do things for themselves. This
involves action on the political system. The skills involved are not
just the interpersonal/communication skills of group work but the
skills of political action — lobbying, organising public meetings,
and so on.

A growing number of workers have discovered the difficulties likely
to be faced with managers and employers when they begin work in
this area. It is rather more of a problem for full-time workers.
Employers (local councillors and their officers) are not known for
their charity towards employees who appear to be questioning and
challenging decisions they have made. Particularly where

this challenge is public. Even where workers have remained within
a strictly educational role, their giving of help to those who
question their employers policies and actions, brings conflict. There
is a sense in which this is inevitable. Social education, if it means
anything to local councillors, is likely to be seen as a form of
control. The values we have discussed lead to a form of

education markedly different.

When we come to the feelings area of the curriculum a similar
crossover between traditional and critical approaches is there. The
interpersonal values have to be translated into political values (as

we did in ‘The politics of developmental needs'). The feeling of
personal confidence and worth becomes a sense of solidarity and
worth as a group. This identification of the individual with the
group is a crucial part of politics.

[page 51]

In many respects it is this area that can cause most problems for
youth workers with their managers. For what this entails, if we are
to follow the logic of our analysis, is for people to define themselves
in terms of their gender, race, age and class. Over the last few years
much of the political action taken by young people from within a
Youth Service context has been by groups who have a close identity
with one or more of these factors. Thus we have seen young

Black and Asian groups campaigning for improved youth provision,
organising around issues such as police harassment and developing
a wide range of selfhelp organisations. Similarly we have lately
witnessed a mushrooming of activities by groups of young women
— the production of magazines both local and national, putting
pressure on for increased 'girls only' provision and so on. The
importance of what has been happening in both these areas of
youth work is that in practice very clear linkages have been made
between young people's everyday experience and the characteristics
by which they are oppressed — their race, gender, and age.

To a certain extent both these areas of work have been allowed to
develop within a Youth Service context because they can exploit the
(white, male) liberal guilt of those who administer the service. The
'solution' that administrators have proposed — multicultural mixed
youth work - has been found to be wanting. It has been rejected by
many of the young people it was supposedly designed for. A
vacuum was created — the Youth Service had no real answer to this
rejection yet felt something had to be done. This space has to some
extent been filled by workers and groups of young people who
defined themselves first and foremost as 'Black' or 'Female'.
However their success, whilst being significant, is also limited. The
direction and form of their work has been experienced

as threatening by both administrators and workers. In a sense there
is little that can be done about this as the work should be
threatening. It should be challenging the racism and sexism that

permeates our society.

Beyond youth work defined by gender and race stands a form of
work that has not been able to exploit the guilt of those who run
the Youth Service — youth work defined by class. If we accept that
social education should be about helping people to understand their
relationship to power and to know who else might be in the same
boat, then class has to be tackled. Developing

people's consciousness of class and the way their membership of a
particular class affects their ideas and life chances can lead workers
into difficult areas. However the next two steps — developing
people's identity with a particular class and taking action on that
understanding — are such that it is difficult to conceive of

many situations where state sponsored youth work could handle
such activities. How many local authorities would agree to their
employees encouraging young people to identify with the 'excluded'
class and to undertake collective action i.e. the achievement of
power for the group or class as a whole? Such a form of youth
work, with values and an [page 52] analysis which lead to conflict,
makes clear the controlling functions of traditional youth work. It is
at this point that social education's values clash with political
reality, where politicians' fine words and phrases dissolve into one -
NO!

So what can social educators do? If they try to push a conflict
model of work too far within a state sponsored Youth Service, then
their money and jobs will soon be lost. If social educators try to
forget or skate round the issue their morality has to be questioned.
Perhaps the only realistic course is for workers to recognise, that as
such a form of social education is oppositional, it must largely take
place outside the state sector. It has to be ‘voluntary’. That said,
much can still be done from within the statutory sector and its
satellites to support the efforts of those attempting a more critical
form of social education.

This then, is some of the ground that an exploration of the
possibilities for action must cover. As suggested in the opening
paragraphs such an exploration is far from comfortable. It includes
looking at one's personal life, examining the means by which we
hold on to power, defining what might be part of a critical social

education curriculum. Finally and inevitably it leaves a number
of questions about just how far such a form of youth work can be
pursued from within a state-run youth service.

Seventh, workers need to be sure of their ground before
proceeding.

As we have seen, workers that have developed a more critical form
of social education work have frequently found themselves in
difficulties both with their employers and with the work they have
begun. In our experience four broad problem areas have arisen.

1. The failure to act politically. Many attempts in this area have
been rather naive. As has been suggested here social
education is political and a critical social education is
Political with a big ‘P'. Whilst much of the knowledge and
skill involved is that traditionally associated with youth work,
the activity surrounding the creation of space for this sort of
work involves conscious political action. It involves the
creation of links with other organisations and bodies that can
support and legitimise the work. The creation of strong and
supportive management committees. The convincing of
councillors and administrators of the importance

and legitimacy of the work.

Making the work legitimate and gaining strength through acting
collectively are the two main themes that workers will have to
tackle if they are to develop a more critical form of social
education. Whilst this conflicts with the ‘spontaneous' ethos of
much of youth work, it is very necessary if workers are to avoid the
mistakes of the past.

[page 53]

2. The failure to act educationally. It must not be forgotten that
the base from which this work springs is an education alone.
This means that any interventions with young people have to
governed by the sort of values that were discussed in the last
chapter. Thus the work must be open, truthful, enhancing of
the persons freedom and dignity. Rather too often, workers
have got off on a ‘trip' of their own. Too often workers have

seen themselves as advocates professing to speak for young
people rather than directing their efforts into helping people
to develop skills for themselves or have allowed their own
unworked through feelings to cloud their response to young
people's needs.

Whilst the relationship between workers and young people has to
be educational, the relationship between the worker and his/her
managers is beset with a number of dilemmas. For instance, just
how open can, or should, a worker be, given what we have already
said about political naivety? There is a need to educate managers
and employers, but this has to be set alongside the creation of
political pressure to support the work you wish to develop. Getting
this particular balance right is no easy matter.

3. The failure to act professionally. I'm rather hesitant about
using the word ‘profesional’ as I've always felt that it is a
singularly inappropriate way of describing the position and
relationship of a youth worker with the young people s/he
works with. Perhaps ‘craftspersonship' is more appropriate.
Whatever, quite a number of problems arise through workers
not working out objectives for their work, planning
appropriate actions and responses and evaluating what they
are doing. The process outlined in Chapter 1 of assessing —
planning — executing — evaluating applies equally to the
workers organisation of his/her time as to solving a

particular problem.

4. The failure to recognise the constraints of the working
situation. Just how much can be achieved in a particular
working situation varies from area to area. Workers need to
make a careful assessment of just what is possible. If
circumstances (and employers in particular) mean that

the sort of work you want to engage in will be seriously
compromised then it is likely to be better to pursue the work
outside a formal youth work context. In other words it has to
be done in your own time. Thus groups of workers have used
organisations such as their local union branch,

local voluntary organisations or groups set up specifically for
the purpose to sponsor their work.

Interestingly some of the most progressive work has occurred where
workers have a high degree of accountability to their employers.
They have used reports and detailed plans in order to get their work
[page 54] accepted by their employers whilst at the same time
building up a strong political base for their work. Their secret if
they have one) has in general been to start small, to gain credibility
and then to build on that.

Eighth, Act!

Whilst there are very real problems in extending and exploring
social education work, there is a tendency for workers to see ghosts.
Problems that are in reality marginal gain an importance in
workers' minds that blocks the development of their work. As we
have seen it is necessary to be realistic about the prospects but
there are gaps and spaces within the Youth Service that can be
exploited. In many respects it is the first step into a critical practice
that is the most difficult one. Once taken, bits of the jigsaw begin to
fall into place, and possibilities appear for a more creative and
critical social education.

In conclusion

For too long youth workers have tried or pretended to be neutral or
nonpolitical. In any society where injustice remains, the social
educator has to take sides. As Paulo Freire once wrote, “Washing
one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless
means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” Sadly, through
our failure to recognise that social education involves action at both
an individual and a collective level, we have taken sides with the
powerful.

Will we change?

Afterword - Towards a critical
social education?

[page 55] Looking back over the last chapter one word seems to
spring out from the pages — the word critical. Its arrival is no
accident. Three meanings of the word join together and make its
use important.

First, much social education has been uncritical of the society and
time it has been born of. It has accepted the powerless position of
those it is supposed to help and done little to change that situation,
even though this would appear to be a direct contradiction of its
core values. In an unjust society social education has to be critical.

Second, there is a lack of good theory around in youth work. Rather
too much reliance is placed on ‘what worked last week'. This folk or
practice wisdom needs careful criticism and examination. If social
education isto develop and have meaning it must connect its
practice with theory. It must develop a careful or critical analysis.

Third, our society is currently in a time of abrupt change and crisis.
Gaps are widening and old solutions are not working. Youth
workers need a theory and a practice that speaks to such critical
times.

In a sense it should be unnecessary to put the word critical in front
of the phrase ‘social education’, for what is education if it is not a
critical process? Unfortunately much of what passes for social
education neither questions nor develops, and it is because workers
and managers have so debased the concept that the word critical
becomes so important.

[page 56]

Helping people to meet developmental needs must involve
educators in politics and in making plain the values and
assumptions that inform their work. Personal problems and
experiences can only be fully understood and acted upon when they

are seen as both private ‘troubles' and public issues. This is the task
for a critical social education and whilst the problems are
formidable, the opportunity for action is always with us. The
starting point can be as close as a member's request for you to
organise a trip and the readiness on your part to encourage and
help them to do the thing for themselves. Neil's request may not
have seemed very special, but the fact that he ended up a creator
rather than a mere consumer is not without personal and political
significance.

Further reading

[page 57] I have only listed books or articles that I feel are
particularly helpful. Anybody who wants detailed references should
contact me [via markksmith.net]

1. Bernard Davies : Part-time Youth Work in an Industrial
Community Leicester : National Youth Bureau, 1976.In Whose
Interests? From Social Education to Social and Life Skills
Training, Leicester : National Youth Bureau, 1979.

In the 1976 pamphlet Bernard Davies reflects on 7 years part-time
youth work and tries to set the personal and individual focus of his
work in its wider social and political context. In Whose Interests
provides a critique of recent developments in social skills training
and the impact of economic and political factors on youth work.

2. P Priestly, J McGuire, D Flegg, V Hemsley and D Welham,
Social Skills & Personal Problem Solving, London, Tavistock
1978.

This book presents a practical approach to helping people,
individually or in groups, to identify and then cope better with
some of the problems they face using a wide range of social skills
and problem solving methods.

3. John C Coleman, The Nature of Adolescence, London,
Methuen 1980

A good summary of the current state of adolescent psychology.

4. David W Johnson and Frank P Johnson, Joining Together -
Group Therapy and Group Skills, New Jersey, Prentice Hall,
1975.

The book attempts to provide “an experiential approach to learning
about the social psychology of groups and to developing the skills
needed to function effectively in groups”. Used in conjunction with
Alan Brown, Groupwork, London, Heinemann, 1979, it provides an

excellent introduction to groupwork practice.

5. C Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, Harmsworth,
Penguin Books 1970.

An introduction to the insights a sociological perspective can
provide

6. Schooling and Culture, Issue 9, London, ILEA Cockpit Arts
Workshop, Spring 1981

This issue, Youth, Community: Crisis, includes a number of relevant
articles. See in particular, Mica Nava, Girls aren't really a
problem..., Tony Taylor and Roy Ratcliffe, Stuttering steps in
political education, and Bernard Davies, Social Education and
Political Education: In Search of Integration.

7. Mark Smith, Organise! A guide to practical politics for youth
and community groups, Leicester, NAYC Publications, 1981.

Part 1 of this book describes a way of working and making
decisions in groups that is both personal and democratic. Part 2
provides a step by step approach to getting information. Part 3 isa
comprehensive guide to taking action. It includes sections on
getting members, lobbying, using the press, organising petitions and
public meetings and the other activities of politics.

8. Maury Smith, A Practical Guide to Value Clarification, La
Jolla, University Associates, 1977.

In the early seventies there was quite a growth in 'values' literature
in the States. This particular guide contains a brief introduction to
the idea, 29 structured experiences, and a short but useful chapter
on designing value clarification programmes. Also included are a
number of readings of variable utility and a select bibliography.

9. Sidney B Simon, Leland W Howe, Howard Kirschenbaum,
Values Clarification: A Handbook of Practical Strategies for
Teachers and Students, New York, Hart Publishing, 1972.

This handbook contains 79 structured exercises, primarily for use in
schools (both primary and secondary). Also included are

suggestions for the use of the techniques.

10. NYB Youth Work Unit, Enfranchisement: young people and
the law - An information pack for youth workers, Leicester, NYB,
1981.

The pack contains a wide range of material concerning legislation
and the issues that arise from it.

11. NAYC Girls Work, Girls Work Pack, Leicester, NAYC
Publications, 1981. This pack contains reports from various
projects and events, background briefing papers and an
introduction. Two other excellent publications from

Girls Work are the Working with Girls Newsletter and Girls
can do anything - a set of nine posters.

12. Waiting our turn, Belfast, NIAYC, 1 981.

Produced in Northern Ireland, this book provides a step by step
introduction into setting up and running a girls group.

13. Judy H Katz, White Awareness — A handbook for anti-
racism training, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press,
1978.

White Awareness, after an introductory section on racism and
relations training, offers a detailed and practical training
programme plus a listing of readings and materials.

14. Charles B Handy, Understanding Organisations, London,
Penguin Education, 1981.

A good introduction to basic organisational concepts and problems.
It includes sections on leadership, power, roles, culture and the
workings of groups. The tone and direction of the book are practical
and the text includes a substantial number of exercises and
examples.

15. Warren Redman, Guidelines for finding your own support,
Leicester, NAYC Publications, 1981.

A short but very useful guide for workers to different methods of

support with suggestions for carrying the guidelines into action.